Hi,
And welcome to another episode of Mindful Minutes.
I'm Matthew,
And in one of my previous videos,
I ended the session with an intention-setting practice.
And I wanted to talk a little bit about what intention is all about today.
So,
When people ask about mindfulness,
One of the things that they said is,
What does it really mean?
And I like to think about it this way.
What do you think the opposite of mindfulness would be?
That would be mindlessness.
Well,
And let's face it,
A lot of times in our lives,
We're actually walking around in a state of mindlessness.
And you're probably thinking,
No,
Not me,
That's not how I am.
But think about it,
Have you ever driven home and forgotten how you actually got there?
That's happened to all of us,
Because we go through routines,
We do the same things,
We're in patterns.
And what our mind does is it kinda checks out.
Every time you watch a movie,
You kinda go into a trance.
So we're in a state of mindlessness,
Or a trance state.
Quite often,
Actually,
Athletes go into a trance state frequently,
They get into the zone,
And they're just doing things.
That can also be a state of hyper mindfulness,
Though,
As well.
So that's where you wanna get to.
Otherwise,
You're just doing things robotically.
In any case,
The point of intention is to focus and sharpen what you want your mind to do.
You see,
Your mind is an incredibly powerful tool that you have.
It is the most powerful tool that you have.
And unfortunately,
On average,
Human beings use a very small percentage of it through their lifetime.
So the idea of setting intentions is the idea of pointing or focusing the energy of your mind to create outcomes in your life,
Or to create situations in your life.
So a few years ago,
I have a son,
His name's Dylan,
And he would frequently ask me this question.
And the question was,
Daddy,
If you could have any superpower in the whole world,
What would you choose?
Now,
Of course,
He was expecting me to say flight,
Or super strength,
Or something of that nature.
And I would kinda surprise him and say,
I would like to be intention man.
And he would kinda scrum his face and look at me,
Like,
What,
Whatever that means.
But the reason I say that is because the power of intention is a way to harness all the energy of your brain and focus it on what you want in life.
Now,
The way we create intentions is we basically just come up with a,
And by the way,
I always recommend we set positive intentions.
We never wanna set an intention like,
For instance,
I don't want to do something.
That's not a healthy intention to do,
Right?
Because your subconscious doesn't really process negative requests like that anyway.
So you wanna have a positive intention.
So instead of saying,
I don't wanna eat chocolate cake today,
A positive intention would be,
Today I'm going to eat healthy things that fuel my body and are good for my overall nutrition,
Right?
So that would be a way to phrase it in a positive way.
But here's how you can use intentions.
Let's just say you have a stressful situation,
You have to have a difficult conversation with somebody.
Let's say you have to,
You're at work,
You have to close a deal or you're gonna talk with your boss or you're gonna talk with a subordinate or you're gonna have a situation.
You wanna put yourself in a certain framework for it.
What you can do is just sit quietly.
It doesn't take long,
Right?
This is like you could do this in a minute or 30 seconds.
What you can do is you can just sit down.
You may wanna close your eyes or not.
I'll leave that up to you.
And just really get clear on what your intention is,
How you wanna show up for that moment,
For that experience,
How you wanna be as if you were wearing a sign board on your chest that said,
I'm going to be constructive and open-minded and helpful,
Right?
Constructive,
Open-minded and helpful in this situation.
And what happens,
And then you can just make that a little bit of a mantra,
Right?
That's a buzzword,
But you can make it a mantra,
Repeat it just to yourself,
Maybe take a few breaths,
Just really focus all your energy on that mantra.
Now,
You may pick a different intention of how you wanna be.
Perhaps you need to be a different state,
But whatever state that is,
You decide.
Focus on that intention,
Give it all the energy that you have,
Not just from your brain,
But other parts of your body too,
And just charge that up for yourself and breathe it in,
Right,
And then go into that situation.
Now,
Here's the trick.
You might notice that that intention comes up,
Or you might notice it slipping away,
But you can just remind yourself to come back to it.
And that's the mindfulness part,
And that's building the muscle.
You see,
We build the mindfulness muscle not in staying in some kind of a state permanently,
But in our ability to notice when we're not in that state and then return to it.
And the return is actually the work.
That's like the pushups,
That's like the reps,
That's what's building that muscle,
Because we now have awareness of when we're in that state and we're not,
Got it?
So it's a simple practice,
Try it.
Remember,
You can't do any of this stuff wrong.
It's always,
I operate on the philosophy that there is no failure,
Only feedback.
So if we're struggling with something,
We gotta get curious about what's the feedback that I'm getting here.
Maybe I'm too distracted,
Maybe I need to spend a little bit more time and get more clear on what my intention is.
Anyway,
Play with it,
Have fun with it.
Let me know,
Send me comments if you try it and what your experience has been.
By the way,
I wanna thank you for all the great feedback on the previous video that I posted.
It was really encouraging and also I'm glad that these are finding a space in your life.
And I just wish you presence and mindfulness and so much more.
Thanks for watching.
